Despite this cool factor, Islamic women’s headscarves and clothing retain strong associations with piety and politics, symbolism that is wielded both by the woman in the clothes and the people around her. In countries where Muslims are minorities, as in the United States, merely wearing hijab is seen as a political act, albeit one that can be interpreted in many ways. Shepard Fairey created an image of a woman wearing a flag hijab as a sign of tolerance and inclusivity, while others claim that the scarf is a sign of Muslim women’s repression.

In Muslim-majority countries, however, the symbolism—and the way that women and the state both use hijab to express ideas—is deeper and more interesting. Rather than arguing about whether or not Muslim women should dress modestly, I study how Muslim women dress: what they are wearing and why, and how they use fashion to exert political influence.

Muslim-majority countries have a history of regulating women’s clothing through official dress codes, whether banning headscarves or requiring them. In Iran, for instance, Muslim women’s dress was a political matter long before it became the symbol of revolution in 1979. The shah banned the full-body covering called chador in 1936 as part of his attempt to undermine the authority of the Shia clerics and westernize Iranian women.

Now, of course, Islamic clothing is required for women in Iran by law. Drafted under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s leadership as part of his vision for a public space governed by the principles of Islamic morality, these laws include harsh punishments for inadequate hijab—jail time, fines, even 74 lashes with a whip. Harassment and arrests for violations became commonplace after the revolution.

Despite conditions of discrimination—because requiring a headscarf and modest clothing is discriminatory—pious fashion comes in a remarkable range of styles in Tehran. One option is to wear the floor-length chador draped over the hair and shoulders. The alternative to chador is a coat-like manteaux with some sort of head covering. There are two popular head coverings to pair with a manteaux. One is a sort of balaclava, called a maghneh. But the fashionable women of Tehran wear a rusari—a scarf covering the head and knotted under the chin or wrapped around the neck, personalized by fabric, color, pattern, and style of drape.

In this urban casual look, the hardware on the Dr. Martens boots echoes the studs on the Valentino crossbody bag. The Topshop floral leggings are the stand-out item, made even cooler by being paired with utilitarian items like a black scarf and a military jacket. The graffiti in the background is of a dish-soap bottle. Photo courtesy of Anita Sepehry/the Tehran Times fashion blog.

Though these items represent the building blocks of modest garb, they do not define its expression. Women define what pious fashion looks like when they get dressed every morning—whether they wear structured separates accessorized with designer sunglasses, flowy pastel chiffons embellished with rhinestones, or ripped jeans tucked into combat boots. On the streets of Tehran, in its cafés and places of business, women find ways to use their clothing to make claims about what counts not only as fashion, but also as piety.

Within a regime that has attempted for decades to promote dress codes as a way to craft particular types of Muslim citizens, and in which direct political resistance is dangerous, clothing has become a form of political engagement that is potentially powerful because it can sometimes slide under the radar as a matter of culture versus statecraft.

What sort of power can modest clothing choices have? For one, dress becomes a way to access governmental office. Women hold numerous advisory roles in government. Chador is a requirement of appointment to these positions. But this limitation also creates an opportunity. Women can take advantage of the symbolic meaning of the chador to mark themselves as supporters of the theocracy, independent of their actual political views.

Then there is a more recent popular style integrating traditional motifs and embroidery that is Kurdish, Turkoman, or Indian. Called lebase mahali, which means “local clothing” in Persian, it does not push the boundaries of modesty. But it does something else: It highlights Persian and Asian aesthetics over Islamic and Arabic ones. This Persian ethnic chic undermines current Islamic authority, sometimes unintentionally, simply because it draws on sources of authority that predate the Islamization of Iran.

This power to critique through sartorial choice comes with substantial risk. Since clothing is so strongly linked to character, a bad outfit can be seen as a reflection of poor character. In Iran, there is even a term for this: bad hijab. Bad hijab can be both an ethical failure (too sexy) and an aesthetic failure (not tasteful). It’s a concern of the authorities because bad hijab disrupts the public Islamic space that Iranian theocracy tries to create.

The infamous morality police have often targeted women for what they deem bad hijab, but they are not the only ones. In fact the first time I noticed it was while shopping with my Iranian friend Homa. “Liz, this is a good example of bad hijab for you,” she said when a young woman walked by. Homa was quite happy to elaborate: “Her ankles are showing, her pants are rolled up, they are made of denim and tight. Her manteaux is short, slit up the side, tight, made of thin material, and exposes the back of her neck and her throat. And her rusari, look at her rusari. It is folded in half so that her hair sticks out in front and back and tied so loosely that we can see all her jewelry. Plus, her makeup is caked on.”

This outfit is a glam version of edgy hijab. The Alexander McQueen-style skull-patterned scarf, fur vest, and Givenchy Rottweiler print clutch give the woman a rock vibe. Photo courtesy of Donya Joshani/the Tehran Times fashion blog.

Homa’s determination of bad hijab was based on a number of perceived violations. The first problem was that the woman’s outfit exposed parts of her body legally required to be covered. Homa also disapproved of the woman’s jeans—reflecting a widely held opinion in Iran that denim is improper for women to wear for both aesthetic reasons (as a fabric that is too casual) and political reasons (as a Western fabric that might infect the subject with Western ideas).

Homa spent considerable time describing for me why this woman’s rusari was inadequate. In this case, the violation depended in part on the scarf’s gauzy material, which was translucent. The way the scarf was worn was also a problem: By folding the rusari in half lengthwise, the woman only covered half as much hair as normal. Homa had also judged the woman’s heavy hand with makeup a hijab “failure” because it made her appear more alluring to the opposite sex.

Why so catty? Of course women, even pious ones, can be hard on one other, but there is more to learn from Homa’s reaction. Accusation of bad hijab is an expression of her own concern over sartorial practice. Pious fashion creates aesthetic and moral anxiety. Am I doing it right? Do I look modest? Professional? Stylish? Feminine? Women try to resolve this anxiety by identifying who is doing it wrong. Improper pious fashion is what allows proper pious fashion to redefine itself away from stigma to style: If this mystery woman was wearing bad hijab then surely Homa was a sartorial success.

Homa’s accusation of bad hijab might have helped legitimate her own clothing choices, but it came at a cost. Public shaming of Muslim women’s dress relies on a specific ideology of how women should appear in public, and women themselves are not exempt from promoting this aspect of patriarchy. By policing other women, they accommodate existing ideology to improve their own status.

At the same time, bad hijab is politically potent because it can shift the boundaries of successful pious fashion, sometimes expanding those boundaries, sometimes narrowing them. Homa might have been outraged by what this mystery woman was wearing, but she was violating some of the very same norms: Her own ankles were showing, her hair peeked out from her scarf, she had on foundation, eyeliner, and mascara.

And when everyone is showing her ankles and painting her toes, it sends a very personal signal about how the state’s power to define women’s morality is declining. What are my friends wearing? What are designers producing? What are bloggers posting? These are the sorts of things that influence what Iranian women wear, not only the threat of police surveillance and arrest. Besides, there are not enough police in Tehran on a hot summer day to arrest every young woman wearing capris.

In a surprise public statement last December, Brigadier General Hossein Rahimi, head of Greater Tehran police, admitted as much. He announced that women who are found to be wearing bad hijab will no longer be arrested, but instead sent to morality classes. It is too soon to say if this is a clear sign of a shift in Iranian politics. But if this does signal a positive change, credit goes to women’s sartorial savvy, not the police. And to the public who would undoubtedly react if everyone wearing nail polish was administered the 74 lashes permitted in the penal code.

In recent weeks a few Iranian women have protested the forced dress code directly. They stand on top of utility boxes, take off their headscarves, and wave them on sticks. These protests have resulted in dozens of arrests, proving that in the current political climate bad hijab might be tolerated, but no hijab is going too far. Images of these protests on Twitter include women in full chador waving headscarves in solidarity. This is a good reminder that it is not the wearing of hijab that Iranian women oppose, but rather the government’s attempt to police their bodies. The protesters and the Iranian authorities agree on at least one thing: what women wear matters.

The post How Iranian Women Turn “Pious Fashion” Into Under-the-Radar Dissent appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

It opens with a small single-story structure made of chain-link fence standing alone in a flat expanse of sand, crowned by a small dome and a gold crescent moon. A minaret rises above one corner of the building, while a semicircular niche in one wall marks the direction of Mecca. When the call to prayer sounds, a group of men and boys enter. They kneel to pray; then stand and line up against one of the chain link walls, grasping it with their hands and facing directly into the camera. Two men in orange jumpsuits sit in a corner of the building as the sun sets. When the “prayer service” is over, the green lights of the minaret flicker off, leaving only the blackness of the desert night.

The video raised many questions for me: Was Gharem equating mosques with prisons? Was he suggesting that conservative forms of Islam like those supported by the Saudi government confined people in cages of hatred and violence? Or, as one Saudi cleric suggested, had he constructed a beautiful, open-air mosque in an act of great piety and devotion?

It is this uncertainty of the art’s meaning that makes it both powerful—and possible.

Saudi Arabia’s vibrant contemporary art scene will surprise many Americans because its very existence contradicts stereotypes of the country as a breeding ground for terrorists and as an ultraconservative theocracy of rich sheikhs in white robes and oppressed women in black veils. A close look at the work of some of the best young Saudi artists provides us with more nuanced and complex images of a country I’ve been fortunate to visit twice in order to conduct research on Saudi art and Saudi culture more generally.

“Modern art is booming here, ” the director of an art gallery in Jeddah told me when I visited that city on the Red Sea coast in 2016. Drawing inspiration from many different sources—Arabic calligraphy, traditional Islamic art, European high art, and American popular culture—Saudi artists are producing street art, pop art, installation art, performance art, and conceptual art. New art galleries have opened in Dhahran, Jeddah, and even in Riyadh, one of the most conservative cities in the kingdom.

Any attempt to understand contemporary Saudi reality must begin by recognizing that it is not the inevitable product of some immutable form of Islam or a timeless version of “Arab culture.” Rather, Saudi Arabia is the result of relatively recent historical and political events. Among these: the development of its vast oil reserves in the 1960s (which produced previously inconceivable wealth); the 1979 Iranian revolution and, in that same year, the violent takeover of the Holy Mosque in Mecca by Wahhabi fundamentalists (which forced the royal family to reverse its policies of cultural liberalization in order to placate conservatives); and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, and the controversial American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed (which posed a challenge to the kingdom’s pro-American foreign policy).

The Saudi government’s response to these challenges—which threatened the regime by destabilizing Saudi society—has been a precarious balancing act. The Saudi royal family seeks to satisfy conservative religious clerics and their followers on the one hand, and more liberal, reform-minded segments of the population, on the other.

Now, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has emerged as the de facto ruler of the country, the power behind the throne of his father King Salman. He has adopted new and more aggressive domestic programs, with the goal of loosening the grip that conservative Wahhabi Islam has held on the country since 1979. He recently announced new policies that will allow women to play a larger role in society and diversify the economy by reducing the dependence on oil. But in a nod to conservative forces, he has initiated a more belligerent foreign policy by boycotting Qatar, interfering in the internal affairs of Lebanon, and conducting an increasingly violent war in Yemen. (Other components of Mohammad bin Salman’s long-term plan for the transformation of Saudi society can be seen in his ambitious document Saudi 2030.)

Arwa Al Neami’s “Never Never Land” documents “family night” at an amusement park in Abha. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Among the themes being explored by contemporary artists is the role of women in Saudi society, in particular the consequences of the ban on women driving, which is scheduled to be lifted in June 2018. Powerful examples of this work include Arwa Al Neami’s documentary photographs and videos entitled “Never Never Land,” which show Saudi women enjoying “family night” at an amusement park in Abha, a conservative city in the mountainous southwest. The most striking images depict young Saudi women dressed in long black flowing abayas driving brightly colored red, yellow, blue, and green bumper cars a smooth, black floor.

The title, “Never Never Land,” is not just a reference to the fantasy of eternal childhood imagined by J. M. Barrie in Peter Pan. It also refers to the signs at the entrances to the amusement park rides, reminding women that, “it is strictly prohibited to carelessly lift the abaya and expose your trousers, or to scream during the rides.” “Never Never Land” evokes both an imaginary place where dreams come true, and the very real Saudi Arabia, where women are met with constant messages about what they can never, never do: marry or divorce, open a bank account or start a business, attend a university, or travel abroad without the permission of their male guardian.

Al Neami’s portraits of Saudi women enjoying themselves driving even as they conform to the rules of their society evoke a bittersweet combination of humor, irony, and pathos. Al Neami has written that with “Never Never Land” she wanted to take her viewers with her “to live and feel what it is like for women in the theme park with all its fun and its restrictions.” As Al Neami told me, when we spoke in 2016, “Saudi women have a lot of fun, even though they are subject to social control.”

Ahmed Mater’s “Evolution of Man” shows Saudi Arabia’s complex relationship with its national treasure, oil. Image courtesy of the artist and Pharan Studio.

Other Saudi artists have focused on their country’s immense oil wealth, which has made Saudi Arabia one of the world’s richest countries. Ahmed Mater’s “Evolution of Man” explores his country’s complex relationship with this “national treasure” as both a blessing (bringing tremendous affluence) and a curse (contributing to extreme inequality, authoritarian government, and violent conflict).

“Evolution of Man” consists of five jet black rectangular light boxes hanging next to one another. Each displays a slightly different X-ray illuminated from behind by a bright blue light. The X-rays morph from a sharply outlined gasoline pump at one end, to the skeletal image of a man holding a pistol to his head at the other. In the middle three images, the nozzle of the gas pump gradually turns into a human hand holding a pistol, while the body of the gas pump grows progressively more irregular and curved, until it becomes the X-ray of a human head and torso.

Mater, who has called himself “the son of this strange and scary oil civilization,” discussed “Evolution of Man” with me in his studio in Jeddah. Mater recognizes that his work lies on what he calls “the red line of censorship.” And he knows precisely where that red line is and how it moves.

“When I produced [the piece] in 2008 or 9, it wasn’t easy to show it inside Saudi Arabia. Now I can see they like it more; now I can show it. As the era of big oil comes to an end … my message becomes more acceptable. In a post-oil economy, this work is less controversial. I’m talking about how this kind of economy, this oil-dependent life, is becoming very dangerous. Not just in this country; it’s a worldwide message.”

Abdulnasser Gharem’s “Ricochet” combines images of a jet fighter and traditional Islamic architecture. Image courtesy of the artist and Gharem studio.

The impact of war and violence is another area that Saudi artists are exploring. Abdulnasser Gharem, one of his country’s best-known artists, grew up in the southwestern corner of Saudi Arabia near the base used by the Saudi Air Force to launch bombing runs against Houthi rebels in nearby Yemen. He also went to secondary school with two of the Saudis who participated in the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, and he served for 20 years as an officer in the Saudi army at a post on the Saudi-Yemeni border.

“Ricochet,” one of Gharem’s most powerful works, presents a frightening image of a jet fighter that emerges like an avenging fury from a turbulent cloud—a cloud of swirling turquoise and gold air currents that eerily evoke the small vaults and domes of traditional Islamic architecture.

The precise relationship between the fighter jet and the mosque is ambiguous. Is the mosque being transformed into a jet fighter? Is the jet coming from the mosque? Has it just flown through (and destroyed) the mosque? Standing in front of “Ricochet,” which was on display in an American gallery, a Saudi visitor observed sadly: “Our culture is not producing beautiful mosques anymore; we are producing jet fighters. Instead of spreading religion and peace, we are spreading terror and war.”

With powerful works like these, contemporary Saudi artists are providing a bridge between our world and theirs. As their art becomes accessible to Western viewers at galleries in Venice, London, New York, and Los Angeles, these artists, as individuals with distinct political voices, are able to convey their insider perspectives on a country that has been defined by the stereotypes of outsiders. At its best, this art transcends, without denying, the differences between Saudis and the outside world, and those within Saudi society itself.

The post What Saudi Arabia’s Vibrant Art Scene Says About Its Internal Struggles appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I thought it was important to let everyone know about my struggle to rip follicles from the root of my face, armpit, and chest every three weeks at a cost of 50 pounds a go. It was a frivolous routine, but that’s how I liked my comedy then—apolitical and areligious. As a Brit of Pakistani Muslim descent, there was always a pressure to explain “my people”—so occasionally I’d liven it up with a few jokes about suicide bombers or arranged marriage. But mostly I stuck to the superficial, and it went down well enough in British clubs filled with drunk men who thought an arranged marriage was something you organized yourself.

There were exceptions, however. One day after doing a show that I thought was funny, for example, a journalist approached me and asked why I was making jokes about something as trivial as my moustache. There were so many other important issues, he insisted—honor killings, terrorism, Zayn Malik. “What a waste of a good Muslim!” he exclaimed.

I tried to explain to him that I’m really not what would be considered “good.” I stalk men, I tell jokes, I wear a G-string on a Tuesday. This certainly wasn’t the first time someone’s expected me to be a professional full-time representative of my religion and, as always, it was too much. I wanted to joke about what I wanted to joke about. So I continued to seek refuge in my moustache and revert back to the mundane material that anyone—an Asian woman, a black man, a white guy—could use. I was just like everyone else, which is exactly what I wanted.

It went on like this for seven years until last February, when three teenage girls from London packed up their bags during the school holidays and went to join ISIS. The news created a media firestorm across the U.K. Most teenagers were getting drunk, reading Harry Potter, or watching RuPaul’s Drag Race, but these girls decided to join the world’s worst most barbaric terrorist group?

The story, however, rang differently for me. I immediately thought I knew why they had gone, and felt I had to say something. And I did more than say something—I made it an entire comedy routine.

You may not think that young women risking their lives and well-being to go to one of the most dangerous places on earth would make for humorous fodder. But I had known girls like this. As a native Brit, I had been brought up like these young women, and I instinctively realized that their rash decision had nothing to do with religion. This feeling was confirmed as I watched one of the girls’ sisters testify to Parliament. She explained that she couldn’t understand why this happened, “My sister was into normal teenage things,” she said, “She used to watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians.” Yes, I thought, that’s probably exactly why they left.

I wrote a show about the episode—dubbed, of course, “The Kardashians Made Me Do It”—and based my material on actual things the girls said and did. For instance, police investigating the families’ homes found a handwritten checklist one of the girls made of things to buy before she left: makeup, body lotion, bras, new knickers … and an electric hair remover. “Wait, you’re going to join a sixth-century barbaric terrorist organization, and you are thinking of doing your bikini line? They’re not going to let you out of the cave, never mind let you shave your legs. And if you’re doing your bikini line, you’re probably too old for them anyway.”

In this way, my show makes clear that the reason I think these girls have gone is not radicalization; it’s sexualization. They’ve seen these ISIS guys on TV and yes, they’re barbaric. But they’re also macho, they’re hairy, they’ve got guns, they’ve got a rebellious cause—they’re hot! “Yeh I’ll have a bit of that, he’s a bit of all right.” These girls think they’re going to get an AK-toting Muslim version of Brad Pitt or the One Direction of Islam. Oh how wrong they are. There’s nothing new about being attracted to the bad boys, even if they are barbaric men—Rihanna and Chris Brown, Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, Punch and Judy. They’re just the latest to join the unfortunate club.

After taking the show public, I expected hate mail, abuse, and threats from people objecting to what I say in my performances. But to my surprise, for a long time I had nothing. Not one negative email, not even from my dad! Come to think of it, I got more abuse for talking about being a hairy woman than joking about jihad.

Instead, the overwhelming response to my show has been audience members telling me things like, “I never saw it that way, you made me see things differently,” or “I was laughing … I didn’t expect to be laughing at this!” Of course, it’s a comedy show not a documentary. I’m a comedian, not CNN.

In fact, the only serious backlash I’ve received for the show has come from the right-wing media. They went after me after I told some of my jokes on a popular daytime talkshow, reprinting some of the more outrageous—and often grammar-challenged—social media posts from “furious” viewers (“Glorifying this woman making jokes about ISIS and terrorism is disgusting!”) and suggesting I was a terrorist sympathizer.

Ironically, it’s the same right-wing mouthpieces that expect “my people” to condemn violence committed by any Muslim-identified terrorist anywhere in the world. Yet when I speak up to belittle and satirize ISIS for the absurdity of the fake jihad-chic lifestyle they sell, I get told to shut up. I’m on their side and they still attack me?

It made me realize that when media talking heads say “Why aren’t Muslims speaking up?” they don’t really want us to speak up. We ruin their tidy us-versus-them narrative. It’s not that they don’t want to hear jokes about ISIS, either. It’s just that they want to hear them from comics like Louis C.K., Bill Burr, and Daniel Tosh. Safe white guys they can relate to and feel comfortable with. Even Donald Trump can get away with saying things like, “Obama was the founder of ISIS” under the guise of “sarcasm.” I’m a brown Muslim woman who is suggesting other ways to look at these situations—maybe the real reason why young girls go off to marry ISIS fighters is less about religion and more about sex and rebellion—and I get accused of supporting terrorism.

Fortunately, freedom of speech—that valuable touchstone of Western democracy—usually comes around to making room for new voices. This is especially true in comedy. The Jews were able to make fun of the Holocaust. The Irish were able to make fun of the IRA. Now it’s time for Muslims to be funny. Let us fight our own war on terror with laughter—it may work even better than the bombs.

The post Why It’s OK to Laugh About ISIS appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The dome at the Omar ibn Al-Khattab mosque is largely decorative, as most domes are. Inside a large chandelier hangs heavily from a chain attached to the apex of the dome, crystals reflecting shards of light. Windows situated along the rim of the dome collect sunlight and disperse it throughout the hall. When the Imam finally makes the adhan, the call to prayer, it echoes elegantly throughout the room, the sound magnified as it travels along the arch. But as domes go, it is a modest one, its interior painted in white.

The domed structure predates Islam. It became a dominant form of architecture because there was no wood for roofing in the Middle East in the seventh century. Instead, they used clay bricks to build, arranging the blocks in circles to form a dome. Domes soon became hallmarks of royal architecture, adorning the buildings honored, says historian Oleg Grabar, with “princely presence.” The Islamic civilizations that came to pass would adopt the architectural form for their own holy buildings, inheriting the reverence they once conferred to secular palaces.

Omar ibn Al-Khattab mosque in Los Angeles.

Domes acquired a functional use, helping Muslims orient themselves toward Mecca for prayer. But they acquired symbolic meaning as well, as vaults to heaven. “In actual fact,” writes Nebahat Avcioglu in Identity-as-Form: The Mosque in the West, “Neither the Koran nor Traditions—the sayings of the Prophet—dictates a shape for a mosque or its accompanying structures. Few Muslims would even disagree with the idea that there is no need for a mosque to pray.”

And yet mosques all around the world bear domes. In Turkey, domes behave as lighthouses for roving believers in search of quiet places for prayer. Tourists cluster in the back of mosques to take photos of the dome interiors, painted extravagantly with Koranic scripture and geometric design. In Iran, these patterns coat the dome exteriors, rendered in vibrant colors. In Southern California, too, these domes dot the landscape. The King Fahad Mosque in Culver City is topped with a smaller dome, but its interior is painted decadently with red and white inscriptions and overlaid with gold filigree. The Omar Al Farouk Mosque in Anaheim is topped with an extravagant rose gold dome. A green dome sits on the roof of the Islamic Society of Orange County in Garden Grove. Collectively, these mosques constitute a topography of Muslim-American existence in the Los Angeles, each one a center for faith-based community-building.

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey.

I used to go to the mosque with some regularity, and when I did, seeing the dome peek up from the skyline as I approached that corner of Jefferson and Exposition boulevards always evoked in me in singular feeling of belonging. This city is so hostile to so many inhabitants, its extensive sprawl isolating and alienating and its public services meager and allocated selectively. But L.A. had inscribed a place made specifically for me—a Muslim-American—and marked the territory with one of the most recognizable symbols of Islam, the dome, along with its sister symbol, the minaret.

There is power, however minute, in visual representation. Ernst J. Grube, a historian of Islamic art, surmised that this was, in fact, the role domes played in Islamic architecture. “The dome appears to be a general symbol, signifying power, the royal city, the focal point of assembly; it can therefore serve both religious and secular purpose,” he wrote in Architecture of the Islamic World—Its History and Social Meaning.

This is also the case in the contemporary U.S., where domes decorate the tops of government buildings and other secular facilities. I once mistook the domes of the Shrine Auditorium for those of a mosque. Located only a few blocks away from the Omar ibn Al-Khattab mosque, the Shrine, now a popular event venue, has all the signifiers of Islamic architecture—arched doorways, a dome at each corner, ornate geometric etchings. Los Angeles architects John C. Austin and G. Albert Lansburgh wanted the building to emulate a Moorish palace.

The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

Before a fire ravaged the building and necessitated a renovation in 1920, the Shrine was called the Al Malaikah Temple. It served as a meeting place for members of Shriners International, a masonic fraternity that has borrowed other symbols of Moorish tradition, all the while distancing itself from any Islamic or Middle Eastern connotations. “The Order of Shriners International, so far as the historical record shows, is an American institution,” they write on their site. “Oriental signs, tokens, and costumes were adopted by those who originated the Order for the sake of pageantry. The jeweled costumes, the picturesque Arab and Fez, all appealed to the organizers and the result today is the greatest Fraternal Order the world has ever known.”

Sometimes I still drive by the Shrine Auditorium and feel a Pavlovian heart-tug at the sight of those domes. The building’s outline has the appearance of something that should belong to me. But its architecture is a facile homage to the culture that gave birth to it. Its domes, after all, are not visible on the inside. There is no adhan echoing within its walls. At the prayer hall of the Omar ibn Al-Khattab mosque, our whispered supplications are dispatched up and collected in the hollow of the dome.

The post The Dome Is Where the Heart Is appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

About two months ago, I was watching another U.S. election season when I learned that one of those bloggers had been sentenced to two years in prison in Egypt. Ahmed Naje was convicted of offending “public morals” and “spreading licentiousness” after an excerpt from his graphic novel was published in a local newspaper. The novel, which includes sexually explicit content, had already passed a censorship office in 2014. But an individual took Naje to court, alleging that the novel caused the plaintiff’s blood pressure to fall and his heart to race.

I first met Naje and his best friend, Mahmoud Salem, back in 2008, when I spent a few weeks in Cairo interviewing them along with six other Egyptian bloggers. Under a program funded by USAID and run out of the American University in Cairo, the eight men and women took courses on the U.S. electoral system and then traveled to the U.S. to cover the elections. I reported a story about them for The National, a news magazine based in Abu Dhabi, following the bloggers from Cairo to Austin and Lincoln, Nebraska.

They were experienced, savvy observers of their country and of international affairs. They had blogged about issues facing women, human rights abuses and the struggles of civil society. Wael Abbas, who reported on his blog about police brutality and voting irregularities, received awards from Human Rights Watch and the International Center for Journalists and was recognized by the BBC as one of the Most Influential People of the Year in 2006.

The rich blogging culture in Egypt has been instrumental not only in breaking news but also in pushing back against free speech restrictions. But bloggers often paid a heavy price for their outspokenness. Salem, who blogged anonymously on “Rantings of a Sandmonkey,” later revealed his identity when he went public with videos showing how he had been beaten by the police.

Back in 2008, I was curious about what they thought about the U.S. political process as Bush’s term came to an end and the U.S. elected its first African-American president—whose feel-good campaign focused on “hope” and “change.” The bloggers in the USAID program spoke to elected officials in the nation’s capital as well as to residents of trailer parks and contractors on wind farms. They debated evangelicals on street corners, canvassed in North Carolina and traveled to rallies. On their blogs, they wrote about the everyday as well as the profound.

On Election Day, Naje and Salem filmed a spoof at an Austin voting station, parodying their own system by acting like confused Luddites trying to make sense of the American democratic process. After asking whether the voting lines were really bread lines (bread lines were making headlines in Egypt) and noting that there was no judicial oversight at the voting station, they commented on how “safe” the elections felt. Where was the fighting, the arguing, they jokingly wondered. “These poor Americans,” Mahmoud says, laughing, as the scene ends.

But they were serious about elections, and the future of their country. Later that evening, Naje told me how his father, then a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, used to dress in his best suit on the morning of parliamentary elections and head down to the polling station. Naje would check up on him later, at his mother’s request, and find his father waiting patiently to vote. When he was not allowed, he would calmly await the arrival of news organizations. When thugs showed up to intimidate voters, he would find out how much they were being paid and offer them more money to leave once the cameras were gone. The whole dance had left Naje jaded.

Debating them that 2008 evening, I wanted the experience of a U.S. election to pierce such cynicism. George W. Bush’s talk of democracy had not made Egyptian democracy any better, but I thought Obama’s might. I wanted them to believe that an Obama victory was also a victory for the Middle East, for the Arab world, and most all, for them. Bush had invaded Iraq on a lie and helped dictators in the region oppress their populations. Bush supervised water boarding and Abu Ghraib; Bush opened Guantanamo. But Obama had promised to reverse it all.

Naje and Salem, however, were having none of my arguments. They were not Obama fans. They were skeptical.

A little over two years later, in January 2011, our different opinions were put to the test. It was Naje and Salem’s turn to demand “change” for their country. Millions took to the streets of Cairo to demand that then-President Hosni Mubarak step down. Young activists like Naje and Salem marched through Tahrir chanting slogans like, “The people want the fall of the regime,” and “Lift your head up high, you’re Egyptian.”

Meanwhile, the United States fumbled its response. The Obama administration was left calling Mubarak an “ally,” asking for “reform” and merely condemning any violence. For nearly a week, the American government struggled to reconfigure decades-old policy that supported dictatorships in return for stability.

The U.S. eventually supported the uprising, but in the Egyptian election that followed, too many candidates split the liberal vote, which provided an opening for the Muslim Brotherhood. The elected government of Mohamed Morsi was overthrown by the military. The possibility of an Islamist government opened the way for a new authoritarianism—and the rise of a new strongman, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi. The Sisi government, in turn, crushed the Muslim Brotherhood, jailing most of its activists and making membership once again illegal. It has also imprisoned thousands of activists, journalists, and other people who continued to struggle for democratic change.

Which is why Naje is now locked away. A 2013 protest law has been used to clamp down on all forms of dissent. Last year, the Committee to Protect Journalists named Egypt as the second worst jailer of journalists worldwide, coming in just after China.

Meanwhile, the rise of the Islamic State in the political vacuum of war-torn Syria has made authoritarianism in Egypt more palpable to some. Dictators once again present a “them or us” argument. America has returned to a pre-revolutionary policy of propping up dictators in the name of stability.

Now, as I follow the current year’s election in the United States, I find myself wondering what Naje and Salem would say about the rise of Donald Trump’s authoritarianism. Or what Naje, the pro-union liberal, would think of Bernie Sanders’ revolutionary message. Would the two of them parody Trump? Or their own system again? Would they still have it in them to make fun of it all—after all that they’ve been through?

I’ve tried to reach out to Salem, but haven’t heard much from him. Which leaves me to reflect. Mostly, I think about how I just didn’t get it the last time. Naje and Salem were right. Obama was not good for them. Sanders, Clinton, or any of the other current candidates probably won’t be either. The feel-good “change” and “hope” campaigns of U.S. politicians are not directed at the Arab world—though many there desperately want those same things. Naje and Salem understood that. They know the U.S. and its history—what we’ve done in the Arab world and abroad for decades. They know the U.S. deposed democratically elected governments in Iran. They know the U.S. counts on dictatorships in “moderate” countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia in exchange for political support and financial gains.

The sentiments that led to the Egyptian revolution of 2011 did not and will not disappear. The desire for more freedom and democratic change are still there.

But U.S. candidates won’t matter to Egyptians until the U.S. examines and re-evaluates policies in the Arab world. As The New York Times editorial about U.S.-Egypt relations put it a few weeks ago, it is time “to reassess whether an alliance that has long been considered a cornerstone of American national security policy is doing more harm than good.” But even this falls short. We must re-evaluate policies towards Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Egypt, and our hand in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. (Sanders’s unprecedented comments in a recent debate might be a start.)
Decades of supporting dictatorial regimes in the Arab world will never result in peace and stability—not for them, and not for us.

So we must look at new options. When Naje and Salem hear a candidate really speaking about different foreign policy in the Middle East, they might have a different opinion of our politics—though they’ll still rightly be skeptical.

Until that point, Naje and hundreds of others remain in jail in Egypt. And we remain silent.

The post Why the Middle East Never Bought Obama’s Politics of Hope appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

For a first-timer, a week in the United Arab Emirates—essentially a twin-headed city-state of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, though there are five other emirates—is a dizzying experience as you struggle to wrap your mind around the multiple vital roles this small country on the Arabian peninsula plays as a regional, and increasingly global, hub.

“As a small country, we must be many things to many people,” says Mishaal Al Gergawi, the managing director of the Delma Institute, a think tank based in Dubai.

To visit the UAE is humbling on a number of fronts. The combination of outsized ambition and seemingly unlimited resources for cutting-edge infrastructure is awe-inspiring. At a more basic level, the UAE eviscerated my stereotypes of profligate “resource-cursed” petro states in that part of the world. This is a country that is clearly planning for the future.

In Abu Dhabi, we visited the sleek headquarters of one of the world’s oldest and largest sovereign wealth funds (with assets in the $800 billion ballpark) that was established in the 1970s to invest the emirate’s oil bounty around the world. More striking than the fund’s sleek skyscraper, or the mind-boggling amounts being managed from it, were the pictures on the conference room’s walls of the small dusty fishing town that Abu Dhabi amounted to in the 1950s. One of the fund’s senior executives grew emotional when I asked him about the photos, saying those pictures remind him of where he grew up, and motivate him to work to secure a better future for his Emirati countrymen (of whom there are fewer than 2 million, living alongside some 7 million foreign workers), even after the oil is long gone.

You hear that a lot in the UAE, the need to plan for a post-fossil fuels future. Even the notorious glitz of neighboring Dubai—a 90-minute drive from Abu Dhabi—is less a monument to the urban bling vast wealth can acquire (though there is an element of that) than it is a Plan B. Back in the 1980s, the emirate deliberately set out to build a 21st-century trading post, a sparkling city that transcends nationality.

Singapore, and to some extent Hong Kong, provided the recipe. Dubai bet on four key “pillars”: trade, aviation, tourism, and finance. Back in the day when Singapore put itself on the map by building the world’s best airline and marketing it via its ubiquitous “Singapore Girl” ad campaigns, the Emiratis leased two old planes from Pakistan’s state airline to launch what has become, improbably, the leading global carrier in terms of international traffic.

Emirates and Abu Dhabi’s rival world-class carrier, Etihad, don’t boast of local women serving its cabins, but pride themselves on hiring pilots and stewards from around the world; like their home base, these are global carriers seeking to transcend nationality. And they mainly have branded themselves—and their nation—by splurging on European soccer club sponsorships. I myself am guilty of being a walking “Fly Emirates” billboard, as a diehard Arsenal fan with a collection of the club’s airline-sponsored jerseys.

The less flashy, but equally important, building blocks for a global trading hub are an unconditional commitment to the rule of law and logistical prowess. Dubai imported English common law and financial regulations to entice investors and expanded its port facility and adjacent free-trading zone, becoming over time the banking and trading center for the entire region. Dubai Ports World has become as influential a player in its industry as Emirates is in the airline business, managing ports around the world (you may recall the political controversy a decade ago over an attempt by the company to add some U.S. ports to its global portfolio of managed facilities).

Dubai has thus become the missing link in the global supply chain—the node connecting East Asia’s dominant financial hubs and London.

“The UAE, particularly Dubai,” Afshin Molavi tells me on the trip, “has emerged as the single most important hub of the New Silk Road linking Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. This is the connector for people, goods, and services across a broad swath of the globe accounting for nearly two-thirds of humanity from Bombay to Beijing, Johannesburg to Jeddah.”

I can thank (or blame) Afshin, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies who has long studied the region, for my dazed confusion while in the UAE. He’s the one who kept volleying Singapore/Hong Kong/Miami analogies my way during the week-long SAIS-sponsored trip I took, along with a dozen or so other academics and Washington policy analysts looking at the economic role of the UAE and UAE-U.S. ties.

As a new city boasting ostentatious skyscrapers (the world’s tallest!), malls (the biggest!), and five-star hotels (the costliest!), it’s easy to knock Dubai as lacking in “authenticity” (a similar knock made against Singapore by Westerners who don’t always appreciate when modernity encroaches on their romanticized view of what more tropical locales should be like). But as Afshin pointed out during our visit, the critique is a bit unfair: It isn’t as if there was much here beforehand that is now being swept away. And there is no way to overstate the importance of a hyper-functional nation in the heart of the Arab world, one in which people of all faiths and backgrounds are welcome to come and pursue their dreams.

That’s the thing about embracing free trade, and wanting to be a connector. It breeds tolerance. No one pretends that the UAE is a freewheeling democracy (not by a long shot), but you don’t become a global hub that attracts people from all over the world to live and invest in if you don’t tolerate their creeds and customs and foster a laissez-faire approach to life and the world around you. You don’t become the destination of choice for Iranians, Saudis, East Africans, Indians, Russians, and Chinese traders, financiers, and vacationers if you are prejudiced against any of them. In that sense, the best precedent for what the UAE is accomplishing in the 21st century may not even be Singapore or Hong Kong, but the Dutch Republic of the 17th century, which embraced pragmatic capitalism (and the tolerance of others that comes with it) over any other dogmas to become the global trading hub of its time.

And much like the Dutch model proved subversive and heretical to its neighbors at the time, so too does the UAE in today’s Middle East. As Reem Al Hashimy, the country’s minister of state in the Cabinet, put it bluntly to us while speaking of the nation’s commitment to advance educated women like herself into positions of leadership: “We’re trying to build a different type of Middle East here.”

The result is both inspiring and a little depressing. Inspiring because you now have an aspirational model for an entire region. Surveys show that young kids across the Middle East would prefer to go live in the UAE than in the United States. As the Delma Institute’s Al Gergawi puts it: “The UAE is important because it breaks the perception that Arabs can’t build lasting things, tangible and intangible. The idea of ordering a road to be constructed and having it done so on budget and without kickbacks is an extremely exotic idea in the region. The more the UAE is successful, the less exotic the notion of success in the Arab world becomes.”

At the same time, this is a bit depressing because, as with Hong Kong and Singapore, it’s happening in a small technocrat-controlled environment, an offshore haven to a larger region, unburdened by the heft of a large nation’s sticky politics. The UAE is succeeding because large countries like India, Egypt, and Iran failed to become that missing node in the global supply chain between East Asia and London. Think about it. Air India, as a matter of geography, had every opportunity to play the global role that Emirates is now playing. And why didn’t Mumbai become the financial hub that Dubai has become? Or why didn’t Egypt, with the Suez Canal, become the logistical crossroads between Asia and Europe?

And so the UAE leaves you with this slightly unnerving question: Is this place destined to remain a remarkable safe haven removed from the madness and dysfunction that surrounds it, or it is it a replicable model, a blueprint for the Arab world’s future?

The post Is the United Arab Emirates the Future of the Arab World? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Indeed, the Stade de France was the one target in Paris last Friday night where the terrorists must have known they’d encounter a level of security they might not (and ultimately did not, thankfully) overcome. But still they deemed it a worthwhile attempt. At least one, and possibly up to three, suicide bombers sought to enter the stadium. As it happened, the first bomber detonated his vest upon being stopped at a security perimeter (the boom was heard during the game’s telecast, and was confused within the stadium for firecrackers). Two other suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the stadium; between them, the thwarted bombers only took the life of one victim. The gruesome plan probably entailed sequencing the explosions inside the stadium in such a way that would have killed (before the eyes of the head of state and a global TV audience) not only scores of people seated near the bombers, but also possibly hundreds or thousands more in an ensuing panicked stampede.

There is another more substantive reason why Islamist fanatics intent on a war between civilizations would target a major soccer match: the sport’s singular role in bridging Western culture and Muslim youth. If you are a crazed “Soldier of the Caliphate,” soccer ranks up there with Hollywood movies and American pop music among the most potent threats in your deluded campaign to win over hearts and minds around the world.

Soccer is one form of global pop culture not driven by the United States, but it’s still a potent Western influence. If terrorists in the Middle East spend any time fantasizing about attacking an NFL or NBA game, it’d only be because they know Americans care about those games; they themselves, and the public in their home countries, certainly don’t. But soccer—the global sport centered around Europe’s major leagues but drawing in players, fans, and business interests from most of the planet—is an obsession throughout the Muslim world.

The game also offers the most prominent example of successful cross-cultural assimilation within Europe. Targeting a match between the French and German national squads may have been a way to strike at two “infidel” nations at once. But, as analysts were quick to point out after the attacks, some of the most prominent French and German stars in recent years—Germany’s Mesut Özil and Sami Khedira, France’s Karim Benzema and Bacary Sagna, among many others—are Muslim celebrities of immigrant backgrounds.

The impressive diversity of Europe’s major soccer leagues, and of their national teams, has long been a potent force for disarming xenophobic anti-immigrant sentiment, and outright racism, across Europe. North African immigrants have never felt more welcome in France than when the entire nation rallied around Zinedine Zidane, the captain of the 1998 World Cup-winning French squad. And it is no small cultural milestone for Turkish immigrants in Germany to have millions of German fans these days wearing a jersey bearing the name of midfield artist Özil.

But the converse often gets overlooked: the impact of immigrant players on the mindsets of soccer fans across the Middle East and North Africa, and the crazed terrorists who thrive on the narrative that there is no compatibility between degenerate infidel societies and righteous Muslims.

The sport is a seductress of Muslim youth, as it is of all youth around the world, much to the chagrin of those eager to fend off Western influences. Across the Middle East, soccer has been a galvanizing force in the debates over whether girls should be allowed to play sports. And just look at any photos of large crowds milling about anywhere in the region—whether at a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan or an upscale mall in Dubai or Saudi Arabia—and you will invariably see some people sporting Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, or Manchester United jerseys.

European games are avidly watched across the region, courtesy of Qatari-owned beIN Sports, the same TV network broadcasting Spanish and French games to U.S. audiences. The success of so many Muslim and immigrant players in the English, Spanish, French, and German leagues provides a constant counter-narrative to tales of immutable estrangement and alienation between West and East. And it isn’t just about players—business interests from Muslim countries (most prominently the airlines from the Gulf states) brand themselves through the sport, to a point where people in the Middle East (and as far away as Malaysia, in the case of some teams) proudly feel that certain fabled European clubs belong to them.

In some cases, they literally do. Paris’ own iconic team, Paris Saint-Germain F.C., is now owned by Qataris.

The targeting of soccer by jihadists fighting modernity should only intensify as the game’s influence continues to expand in the Muslim world. And when you look at the calendar of upcoming major tournaments—with the next two World Cups slated for Russia and Qatar, and next summer’s Euro Championship hosted by France, kicking off in the targeted Stade de France—security forces everywhere, not to mention lovers of the game, should consider last Friday night a declaration of war by the terrorists against the world’s most beloved sport.

The post Why ISIS Declared War on Soccer appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

“It’s normal,” said 13-year-old Alá. She stared out of her bus window toward the field of stumps, and the towering gray separation wall just beyond. Alá, a gifted and traumatized violinist who grew up during the second Palestinian intifada, was riding with fellow musicians from Ramallah to a concert in Bethlehem. The journey once took 20 minutes, but now its snaking path can require at least two hours, depending on the military checkpoints.

“Normal” was also the word Alá used to describe the time she and fellow musicians were stopped late one night at a “flying checkpoint,” one of 600 such obstacles in a land slightly smaller than the state of Delaware. There, a soldier demanded she step out of the van and play her violin. And “normal” is the word her neighbor used when told of a 2 a.m. raid by ten soldiers who burst into the flat of a young mother. She was home alone with her 6-month-old boy; they pointed their machine guns at her, only to find they had stormed the wrong apartment.

Indeed, Israel’s military occupation itself, which began 48 years ago this June 6, during the Six Day War, is itself the norm for all Palestinian children, and anyone under the age of 50, living in the West Bank. Occupation, relentless settler colonization, and the ever-splintering archipelago of semi-sovereign Palestinian islands in a sea of Israeli military control: For many Palestinians, this is normal; it’s all they know.

In the face of this—and Israel’s offensive into Gaza last summer, which by U.N. estimates killed nearly 1,500 civilians, including 500 children—it is hardly surprising that a nonviolent movement of Palestinians and their overseas supporters to confront Israel has grown stronger in recent years. The movement is diverse and its approach varies, but its shared tactics include boycotting Israel by divesting from companies that profit from the occupation, shaming artists slated to perform in Israel, and discontinuing exchanges with Israeli universities. The effort, spearheaded by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, is reminiscent of an earlier generation’s campaign against South Africa during the Apartheid regime.

Today Israel is paying an increasingly steep reputational price for its treatment of Palestinians. In 2013 the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking canceled a visit to a conference in Israel. Later that year the American Studies Association, citing the conditions of Israel’s occupation, voted to endorse an academic boycott of Israel. Last year the actress Scarlett Johansson was forced to resign as an Oxfam global ambassador after she refused to stop pitching for the beverage maker SodaStream, which operates a factory in the occupied West Bank. Last June, the Presbyterian Church USA narrowly voted to divest from three companies which profit from the occupation, including Caterpillar, whose bulldozers plow under Palestinian olive trees and demolish their homes. Late last year, the European Union announced a ban on importing food from Israeli settlements. Earlier this year, after its bids for numerous contracts in the U.S. were opposed by activists, the French infrastructure conglomerate Veolia sold off much of its operations in Israel. And last month, the singer Lauryn Hill canceled her concert in Tel Aviv.

In the face of these modest successes, Israeli government officials and some of their political allies overseas try to silence pro-divestment critics. A central tactic is to accuse them of anti-Semitism rather than engage in a substantive debate on the realities of an occupation that will soon reach its half-century mark. On May 31 Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu decried the “international campaign to blacken” Israel’s name, likening the effort to past efforts accusing Jews “that we are the focus of all the evil in the world.” Such cynical accusations are especially insulting to the many Jews, both in and outside of Israel, concerned that the occupation and relentless settlement-building is shredding the fabric of Israel’s democracy.

It is hardly anti-Semitic to point out, for example, the separate and unequal reality facing Palestinian children, like the teenage violinist Alá and her fellow music students, who must wait in long checkpoint lines while the privileged, of another class and religion, whisk through a separate kiosk in the fast lane. Or that the ringing of East Jerusalem by Jewish settlements has all but killed the Palestinian dream of a viable, contiguous, independent state standing side by side with Israel. It is truths like these, not anti-Semitism, that fuel Israel’s critics and strengthen their arguments.

In 2010, an Israeli think tank warned that the growing “delegitimization” challenge could “develop into a comprehensive existential threat within a few years.” Late last year, a former chief of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, warned that “we are losing the fight for Israel in the academic world,” as Israel has replaced the old South Africa as the catalyst for student outrage on campuses across the Western world.

Palestinians seeking redress, meanwhile, have redoubled their strategy of direct nonviolent confrontation. Surely this is preferable, and more effective, than lobbing rockets over Gaza’s borders toward Israeli cities and its Iron Dome, or sending young men strapped with explosives into Tel Aviv cafés.

Alongside the nonviolent political activism, Palestinians are increasingly using civil society institutions, including the arts, to create the conditions for their own freedom. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in music—most of all, improbably, classical music—where burgeoning youth orchestras and music programs in villages and refugee camps offer Palestinian children a chance to reimagine their lives.

“This is a musical intifada!” shouted Ramzi Aburedwan, the bearded young founder of Al Kamandjati (“The Violinist”), to a bus full of children heading toward a nonviolent confrontation with their occupiers. Ramzi himself, at age 8, had thrown stones at Israeli soldiers during the first Palestinian intifada, which began in 1987. Now, he seeks to give the next generation a creative outlet to resist Israel’s military domination of their lives.

One sun-baked afternoon, I watched Ramzi lead the young musicians, including 13-year-old Alá, off their bus and into the terminal at the towering Qalandia checkpoint, which separates Ramallah from Jerusalem. There in the terminal, a kind of holding pen filled with metal chutes and bars, they set up their music stands in plain view of stunned Israeli soldiers. At the signal of the conductor, Alá and the other members of the youth orchestra paused, instruments at the ready. Ramzi had told the young musicians that if a soldier tells them to stop, “don’t listen, just play.” And so they did: the sound of Mozart’s Symphony No. 6 filled the terminal, to the astonishment of the soldiers and the Palestinians clutching their precious permits for their journey to Jerusalem. We are here, Alá and her fellow musicians seemed to be saying.

On the bus home, Alá allowed herself a smile. “This,” said the teenage violinist, “was the best concert of my life.”

The post A ‘Musical Intifada’ in the West Bank appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.